


The Lord Loves You

by jesuisherve



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Catholic Guilt, Gen, Guilt, Internalized Homophobia, Queer Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 09:43:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3442475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesuisherve/pseuds/jesuisherve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The Lord loves you!” the man insists again as you pass him. His eyes are wide but you look away, gaze sliding over him like he’s not even there. </p>
<p>--<br/>Oops yet another Catholic Guilt fic for Mac.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lord Loves You

“The Lord loves you!”

You sidestep the man, who’s standing in the middle of the sidewalk and waving his arms at midlevel. He’s apparently homeless, and visibly drunk. You’re a little buzzed yourself, so you don’t think much of it.

“The Lord loves you!” the man insists again as you pass him. His eyes are wide but you look away, gaze sliding over him like he’s not even there. You don’t engage with homeless people preaching on the street.

But the sentence sticks in your mind; not because you know God loves you, but because God doesn’t love. You’re supposed to be _afraid_ of God. His omnipotence makes Him terrifying. He could smite you at any moment. You’ve always been afraid of God, and rightfully so. A misstep with God would land you in Hell.

You get to the bar and the man on the street slips from your mind. Or you tell yourself that. After a few beers and a round of seeing who can come up with the best bird jokes about Dee, it’s easier to put it all far back in your head.

_The Lord loves you!_

The homeless man doesn’t know shit, really, so you don’t know why you keep thinking about him. The Lord didn’t love you when you got a crush on Jesse Nichols from down the street when you were twelve years old. You learned that in school. Your teacher that year split the boys and girls up one day and a health lady came in with books that explained how your parts worked and what God wanted for your future.

You sat in your desk, feeling slightly uncomfortable and glancing around at Charlie who looked equally uncomfortable. You both giggled with the other boys the first few times the lady said ‘testes’ but your teacher shushed you all. As the lesson continued and the lady asked the class to open the books, it was clear that God did not want you to like Jesse Nichols the way you did. Your face burned red and you ducked your head until recess.

_The Lord loves you!_

The Lord didn’t love you when Shawn Ellis kissed you at the youth group camping trip your mom sent you on when you were fourteen. You were caught by the youth group coordinator right when Shawn put his tongue in your mouth. The look on the coordinator’s face when you pulled back sharply in surprise made your heart shrivel. Letting Shawn kiss you had been a moment of weakness and you wanted to puke when she sat you both down and told you that kissing other boys was a sin. You had known that! You _knew_ kissing Shawn was not allowed because the health lady told you so in school when you were younger.

_Years later Shawn Ellis will call you a faggot in grade eleven and you’ll turn red from fury instead of shame. It will be doubly hurtful because you’ll see a knowing light in his eye and his hard grin. You’ll take a swing at him but he will beat the shit out of you in front of the gym class. You’ll get suspended for fighting and on the way home you’ll get into another fight except it’s with Charlie and he will wind up with a bloody nose for no other reason than you need to lash out at someone. You’ll get home you’ll scream into your pillow and fight back tears and break stuff in your room. But that event is far away while_ you’re only fourteen and getting lectured by the coordinator about how you need to have a long conversation with God and ask for forgiveness.

You ask Him for forgiveness and promise the coordinator that it will never happen again and that you’re a good Catholic, you really are, you swear it.

You didn’t

                ( _couldn’t)_

look at Shawn the entire time.

_The Lord loves you!_

God didn’t love you when you were twenty one years old and high school was becoming a distant memory. You were still selling drugs and did not know what you wanted to do with your life yet. You tried to reach out to your dad by visiting him in prison, but instead of getting the guidance you were looking for, you hear about the faggots on the inside. You suspected that he had taken a bunch of Ritalin like Dennis did for college because he seemed fired up over it and far too focused on the subject. But the words coming from Dad rang in your head because your father and the Heavenly Father both hate faggots and they have to be right because they are Authority.

You poured over the bible that you had got as a gift for your confirmation. _Man shall not lie with man._ It said it there in black and white. It could not be any clearer than that. The word of God.

The first time you had a true sexual experience with a man; you left his house before first light and slunk out the backdoor. The night before had been a haze of liquor but you remembered how his beard felt and his hands and what kissing him felt like and it was so good that you knew then exactly why God made being gay a sin because there’s no way that something like what happened that night could be anything but a test of faith and you failed.

You fail that test of faith every time you jerk off and think about Dennis. You try not to, but sometimes

                ( _usually_ )

 there’s a moment when you’re getting close to finishing that you realize the image of the woman you had conjured in your head had at some point become Dennis and had been there for a long time. You don’t know exactly how long you’ve been thinking about Dennis, but you have been and it gets you so hard  

                ( _Dennis does have a good body fuck and he’s sexy shit man he is something else_ )

and when you cum guilt crashes into you like a devastating punch. The Lord does not love you in those moments. In those moments, you feel sick with shame and fear because you’ve fucked up again.

Rules have always made sense to you. You don’t like all of them and sometimes you skirt the boundaries of rules and laws, but rules exist for a reason. There has to be a reason to why being gay is a sin. God wouldn’t make it a rule unless it had to be a rule.

                ( _Right? Years and years of being told that it’s wrong by so many people._ )

The Lord doesn’t love you. You’re very sure of that.

                ( _Maybe you don’t need the Lord to love you_. _You can love yourself_.)

You can always ask for forgiveness, right? You fuck up, you say you’re sorry. That’s what confession is for anyway.


End file.
